Samsung upgrades Notebook 9 laptops with Kaby Lake chips

Samsung's Notebook 9 laptops are faster, but the battery life of just seven hours disappoints

Samsung has upgraded laptops in its Notebook 9 series with Intel's latest Kaby Lake chips, jumping ahead of rivals expected to announce new PCs at CES.

The Notebook 9 laptops, which have 13.3- and 15-inch screens, are lightweight laptops with full HD displays. Samsung didn't share specifics of chips in the laptops, which will be unveiled by Intel at January's CES.

Nonetheless, there are some things you can expect. The new laptops will be faster than older models and also have better graphics. PC makers are measuring a performance improvement of about 5 percent to 15 percent improvement in Kaby Lake performance compared to the predecessor Skylake. Integrated graphics will be able to handle video beyond 1080p resolution.

The battery life provided by Notebook 9 models is about 7 hours, which isn't as high as others in its class.

The laptops have up to 256GB of storage, 720p webcams and 802.11ac wireless. The 13.3-inch model can have up to 16GB of memory, while the 15-inch model has 8GB of memory soldered on the board.